Beauty's Beast(17)

She turned to move in the opposite direction when something occurred to her. What if it wasn’t Nagi or his Toe Tagger army? What if vigilante Skinwalkers were attacking the infants?

Samantha’s scalp tingled. She couldn’t let her own kind kill those little ones. It was wrong—so wrong.

She charged after Alon, following his scent as she plowed through the undergrowth toward the unknown.





Chapter 9



Samantha caught up with Alon and Aldara before they reached their objective. Alon turned to face the threat coming from behind and stopped the instant Samantha appeared.

Aldara bared her fangs. Samantha reared up to face this threat, but Alon extended a hand to stop Aldara. Samantha couldn’t hide her distress. They faced her together with huge yellow eyes, gray, pointed, batlike leathery ears and those terrible spiny teeth. They were near identical except Alon was larger and Aldara had fur-covered breasts. They were the most frightening things she had ever seen, and her body began to tremble even as she reared to her hind legs, rising to her full nine feet.

“It’s Samantha,” he said, his words slurred by his fangs.

“She’s a bear?” hissed Aldara.

“A healer, like her father. We might have need of her.”

Is that why he stopped the attack? Because she might be useful?

Aldara lifted her chin as if listening. A moment later she shuddered.

“They’re here. I can feel them on my skin,” she whispered. “Nagi’s forces.”

Alon went still and then the skin on his shoulders quivered like a horse chasing off a fly. “Yes.”

“What do we do?” Aldara’s huge, bulbous eyes were wide with terror.

“Kill them before they can report back.” His words were hushed, slurred and sinister. The harsh, guttural tone sent a shiver through Samantha.

“He’ll know. He’ll see them in the circle. They’ll tell him where to find us.” Her words were an urgent whisper.

Alon raked a hand through the long silvery fur on his head. It was so fine that the tracks of his fingers remained for a moment.

“Kill them quick. Get the Beta, Gamma and Delta packs and run.” He turned to Samantha. “They will kill you if they see you. You can’t defeat them alone. Your best chance is with us.”

Best chance. Her ears began to buzz.

She growled in acknowledgment as she could not speak in this form.

Aldara leaped away, running on all fours like a baboon. Alon glanced back at Samantha and then raced after his sister.

Samantha dropped to all fours and charged after the twins, who left a wide path through the undergrowth. Before she reached them, the terrible howling erupted again and then a roar. She broke from cover to find two Ghostlings locked together in combat. Alon, she realized, with an intruder.

Aldara scrambled from one small Ghostling to the next, stopping briefly to emit a high-pitched cry before moving on. Six small bodies littered the ground in bloody contortions. Four had been torn open in the middle and two had had their throats ripped out. The Delta Pack, Samantha realized.

She heaved with a wave of nausea at the carnage. Aldara finished her survey and roared. It was a sound that Samantha would never forget, full of pain and wrath and the need for revenge. Aldara leaped on the back of the intruder, heedless of the spines that punctured her, and sank her fangs deep into the juncture of its shoulder and neck. Alon released his foe, and Samantha now saw it was a female. The Toe Tagger twisted and howled in a vain effort to shake off her attacker. The Halfling’s movements seemed to drive Aldara’s fangs only deeper into the vessels and tissue at its throat. She could not shake Aldara off. Finally the Ghostling staggered and dropped to her knees. Only then did Aldara release it. Her bloody mouth gaped and she gnashed her teeth as she stood over her fallen foe.

Samantha caught movement from the corner of her eye. Alon and Aldara faced the female, so they did not see the second Halfling attacker streak from the cover of ferns. But Samantha did.

It came so fast she did not have time to think. Instead, she charged, meeting the thing in midair as it tried to tackle Alon. Her block drove it off course, and they both hit the ground.

The ease with which it knocked Samantha down both shocked and terrified her. The male Ghostling raised a claw that glistened with the blood of the Delta Pack. But his blow never landed. Alon grabbed its raised arm and sank his long, spearlike talons deep between the male’s ribs.

Her attacker gasped as he sank to his knees. Alon withdrew his talons, and red, frothy blood bubbled from the Ghostling’s mouth. It fell forward and lay still.

Alon glanced at Samantha and then turned back to Aldara, who tried and failed to rise as she gripped her chest and abdomen. Blood seeped between her fingers.

Samantha bellowed.

“They’re gone,” Aldara said to Alon. “Their souls have already fled!”

His gaze darted here and there, sweeping the ground. Did he search for the souls of the young ones? The fur on Samantha’s neck lifted as she watched him hunt for what she could not see. She could see ghosts, but not the escaping souls. What was the difference?

She placed her paw over her heart, closed her eyes and concentrated. An instant later she felt the flash of energy and the zip of power as she shifted forms. For one moment she stood naked in her long bearskin cape. She stroked her shoulder, summoning another flash of light. Now she stood dressed in sneakers, jeans and a clean white T-shirt.

Alon did not shift. Neither did Aldara. But Aldara did topple sideways before Samantha could reach her.

Alon charged away. He returned a moment later with a pile of stones.

“I have to check for other intruders,” he growled and was gone again.

Samantha placed the stones in a circle and motioned Aldara to the center.

Samantha tugged the crow feather free from her hair. Aldara closed her eyes as Samantha began to chant.

The wounds healed from the inside out. First the blood ceased and finally the tissue knit. She finished her work and discovered Alon there guarding them both. Still in his third form, he now seemed more imposing than terrifying, and the sight gave her an unexpected sense of ease.

“No others,” he said.

“None of the souls can be saved?” she asked.

He shook his head.

Aldara curled into a ball and wept.

Alon knelt beside her, resting a hand on her silvery back.

“Aldara. We need to find the Beta and Gamma packs and we need to run.”

She lifted her damp face. “What about them? We have to bury them.”

“I’ll do it,” said Samantha. In her bear form the digging would be no trouble.

They both stared at her with those terrifying jaundice eyes. She nearly succeeded in repressing a shiver.

“You both go after the others. I’ll bury them and meet you at the house.”

Alon shook his head. “We can’t leave her.”

“You said there were no more intruders,” reminded Samantha.

“Bury them, please,” said Aldara. She staggered to her feet.

Samantha knew that Aldara would feel dizzy and weak after the healing. But still Alon’s sister dropped to her knees and began to dig. Her long talons tore through the packed soil like steel through sand.

Samantha shifted and joined Aldara. A moment later Alon added his efforts. The result was one long deep grave for the six twins to rest side by side. Aldara made a bed of ferns and blanketed their desecrated bodies with the same. Together they filled the grave, covering the little twins who had not survived their first year. This was what Nagi did to his own kind.

She stilled as she realized this was also what her kind were doing, hunting the infants. Killing them while they were small. Samantha felt sick and ashamed. No wonder Alon and Aldara both hated her.

Samantha shifted back to human form to say a blessing.

“We have to find the rest,” said Aldara.

They did not have far to look. The Gamma Pack had also sensed the intruders. Samantha did not understand it. Alon said they could feel others of their kind on their skin just as they could feel ghosts.

The group of twenty all hid in the cover of thick fern and brush. Alon sensed them first. Aldara met them with open arms.

It took a moment for Samantha to realize that the yipping and snarling was weeping. The Gamma Pack members were mourning for their lost siblings.

Samantha wept, as well.

She felt Alon squat beside her and glanced down to see his elongated foot covered with silvery-blond fur, the nails just as terrible as a grizzly’s claws.

“Are you surprised to see that we can feel?” he asked in that strange guttural voice.

“No,” she said, her denial quick and defensive. She let her shoulders droop. “Yes,” she whispered. “You aren’t what I was taught to expect.”

He left her there and joined his sister, who was trying to explain what had happened to the youngsters. They could not understand why two of their own kind would attack them. Every adult Ghost Child they had ever met had been kind and nurturing.